If the government wants to spend our money, the least it could do is tell us how the money is being spent. Taxpayers have a right to know. This seemingly unexceptionable sentiment is likely to be reiterated in various contexts as the government introduces its new personal tax statements. Yet the information we are going to be given is highly selective, and comes with an agenda attached.

First, the agenda. Some on the Tory right have favoured this measure for a long time, on the principle that making people more aware of how much tax they actually pay, and how it is spent, will transform their attitude to spending. Opinions fluctuate, but on core services such as healthcare, education and pensions, a solid majority strongly supports public provision. The Tories want to change all that.

The ideological thematic informing this move is that greatly over-estimated type, the taxpayer. Always over-burdened, always promised but never receiving value for money, always vigilant for ways of clawing back some of the purloined income, the taxpayer's presumed outlook is roughly that of the small shopkeeper trying to keep the books in order.

One of the first things that such a person would presumably like to trim is welfare spending, which polls show is one of the least popular forms of spending. Attitudes are not unequivocal or undifferentiated, as people are much more sympathetic to higher pensions than to unemployment benefits. This is why it is significant that a range of different kinds of spending are grouped under the single heading of welfare – pensions, housing, disability benefit and unemployment benefits.

In the lexicon of the right, the taxpayer is a powerfully motivating type. In reality, however, the category is meaningless . We are all taxpayers, but we are not all taxed to the same degree, or in the same ways; we do not all make the same use of public services or welfare; and we do not all share the same skinflint views about public spending.

One of the outstanding faults of this proposal hinges on those differences. The statements will give a breakdown of spending according to broad categories: if you were paid £15,000 last year, for example, you paid £424.55 towards health, £342 towards pensions, and £317.80 towards schools, and so on. However, the biggest form of tax that those on lower incomes pay is not income tax. It is the various forms of indirect taxation such as VAT, fuel duty and taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, as well as the regressive council tax. In fact, of all taxes paid, direct taxation is the only progressive form of tax; and it is the only tax about which we will be given itemised information: none of the regressive taxes or their allocation will be listed in the personalised tax statement. This huge omission will produce an extremely distorted picture of how taxes and spending really works.

Another problem with the statements is the individualised basis on which this information will be disclosed. The intention is that one should relate to the state much as one relates to Ocado: you get no information about what others have paid, only your own contribution and the general public goods that have been purchased with it. Yet, this is a nonsense. The point about groceries or similar goods is that they are purchased privately for private consumption. Public services are purchased collectively and generally consumed on the basis of need rather than market demand. It is thus impossible to evaluate the realities of tax and spending on the basis of one person's statement.

Despite its flaws, many will be happy to have these statements as some minimal step toward a greater freedom of information. But it would be a mistake to see it in this way. It is the strategic control of information that we are seeing. Real freedom of information would be if the government was compelled to supply information that it didn't want to, but which clearly answered a democratic need.

If we really want the whole truth about tax and spending, then the government should provide to each citizen not just a personalised tax statement but a far more comprehensive breakdown. We should be told how much people paid in tax by income and wealth brackets, how much corporations paid depending on the profits they earned, exactly what kinds of tax were collected from each, and what the tax pays for. That would be a bare minimum, and everything that falls below it – such as this tax statements charade – is smoke and mirrors.